Forgive me... I'm gonna say something, and someone might be offended by this. So, I just went to DM's Guild for grins to see what might be there. I see someone has made images of Faerunian god symbols and put them up for sale. Now, were it a modest price, even if I had no plans to use them, I might chuck the person a few dollars. If I had a use for them in another product of my own, I could use them as a result. Then I look at the price and its $34.95 for 39 symbols. That's like almost 90 cents per symbol, and nothing says you'll use them all. You'll probably only use 4 or 5 of them if you're the average person.

Now, I get it, its a free market, and you can charge what you want, but do people not get the idea that selling 50 times the amount at a lot cheaper the price on a virtual commodity makes you more money? There's no way in the Barrens of Doom and Despair that I'd every pay $34.95. But I would pay $4.00, just to encourage the person to make more even if I had no plans to use it.

So, just to see.... am I just a cheap bastard (hey, I'll own it)Ö or how much would you be willing to pay?

Now, I'm also wanting to add here, its not JUST this. I see people putting up 3 page articles for a race and wanting $6 for it, and all I can think is "what a waste of space.... noone is going to buy this". Are others feeling the same way for a lot of the stuff they're seeing up there? I basically look at DM's guild kind of like "buying" dragon articles that would have been put in the magazine years ago, so if they're kind of interesting and maybe a quarter to a buck or two, I'll throw the person a bone if it sounds interesting, and just look at their idea. 80% of the time, its fairly useless to me, but sometimes you come across a true gem.

BTW, if the person that made this is here, please understand... I think your work is VERY pretty. You should be proud of it. Its just the price, and yours is just the latest example so it caught my eye. I honestly would have given you money and had no plans whatsoever to use the stuff. A lot of the deity symbols you see here came from another person who made them and offered them up free for people to use for non-business purposes. I really appreciated that person going to that effort and sharing with this community.

I would not buy it anyway cause I personally don't need some generic symbols.

Speaking of weird pricing I notice stuff like that in other places too. There are 8 page Kindle novels that cost $10. There are free to play video games nobody ever heard of which sell a tank for $500.Maybe they are trying to find some weird guy with a lot of money. I have a suspicion that stuff like that is some kind of money laundering.

The DM's Guild is very interesting in terms of its sales dynamic. People love free stuff, that is abundantly clear. What they want after that and what they are prepared to pay for is another questions entirely. An example for you: I have had 1179 downloads of my (essentially free because it's pay what you want) "Soargar's Legacy" piece, which is simply my Dragon #277 article updated for 5E. Generous souls have given me revenue of $42.45 for this amount of downloads. Conversely, my "Imbrar's Inheritance" sequel (which I have sought the outrageous sum of $1 for) has been downloaded 85 times for revenue of $41.29. So, what that tells me is that less than 10% of the people who downloaded "Soargar's Legacy" thought my work was worth spending a dollar on to get the subsequent product. Humble pie indeed!! I too look at my works in terms of "articles that would be in a magazine" so the most I've ever asked for is $2 (for "Talona's Touch", by far my most successful article in terms of revenue and a decent amount of downloads) but it's clear - going by the bestsellers lists - that people want big stuff at an affordable price. I personally think my work is worth slightly less than a cup of coffee or slice of pizza, so I'm maintaining my prices. It helps however that I don't want a career in writing/RPG design, don't need the money and been told by people who matter that my work is decent. If any of those things didn't apply though, the exercise might be a bit soul destroying!

But I think that graphics/illustration work is different. You can put in many hours getting that stuff right and I think you should receive due reward for that. But I agree that $34.95 at the DMs Guild is pie in the sky stuff - not because the work isn't worth that kind of money (I have made enquiries re this sort of stuff and what is on offer is cheap, believe me) but I don't think the place is habituated by "big spenders". I note also that the author has broken up the images in "packs" and so you are getting all of them at a discount at the $34.95 price. I will probably buy them as they are different, useful for some of my planned projects and I have DM's Guild money sitting there doing not much of anything.

The DMs Guild. A nice place to visit if you have the time to trawl through a morass of "stuff" that will never make anyone rich.

-- George Krashos

"Because only we, contrary to the barbarians, never count the enemy in battle." -- Aeschylus

Update: I noticed that it says you can use the symbols "in other products to be sold on DMsGuild.com." Now as something to be used in your own commercial products $35 doesn't sound that crazy.

To be clear though Ö. ANYTHING sold on DMs Guild can be used/referenced in another product. So long as you aren't just blatantly stealing other people's works. So, any artwork collections put up as a product on DMs Guild can be used in DM's Guild (I'm being specific here... if someone's product itself IS artwork, not that they included artwork in their text description of botswanaland). If I were to put up ideas about Maztica, someone else can come along and reference it and even use snippets from it if they properly document it. In fact this is one of the things I like about DM's guild, and one of the things I tried to do in my Complete Red Book of Spell Strategy was make spell lists that not only included MY spells, but also put symbols beside spell names in the list to reference spells from other people's DM's Guild products that I felt were balanced enough to use.

The DM's Guild is very interesting in terms of its sales dynamic. People love free stuff, that is abundantly clear. What they want after that and what they are prepared to pay for is another questions entirely. An example for you: I have had 1179 downloads of my (essentially free because it's pay what you want) "Soargar's Legacy" piece, which is simply my Dragon #277 article updated for 5E. Generous souls have given me revenue of $42.45 for this amount of downloads. Conversely, my "Imbrar's Inheritance" sequel (which I have sought the outrageous sum of $1 for) has been downloaded 85 times for revenue of $41.29. So, what that tells me is that less than 10% of the people who downloaded "Soargar's Legacy" thought my work was worth spending a dollar on to get the subsequent product. Humble pie indeed!! I too look at my works in terms of "articles that would be in a magazine" so the most I've ever asked for is $2 (for "Talona's Touch", by far my most successful article in terms of revenue and a decent amount of downloads) but it's clear - going by the bestsellers lists - that people want big stuff at an affordable price. I personally think my work is worth slightly less than a cup of coffee or slice of pizza, so I'm maintaining my prices! It helps however that I don't want a career in writing/RPG design, don't need the money and been told by people who matter that my work is decent. If any of those things didn't apply though, the exercise might be a bit soul destroying!

But I think that graphics/illustration work is different. You can put in many hours getting that stuff right and I think you should receive due reward for that. But I agree that $34.95 at the DMs Guild is pie in the sky stuff - not because the work isn't worth that kind of money (I have made enquiries re this sort of stuff and what is on offer is cheap, believe me) but I don't think the place is habituated by "big spenders". I note also that the author has broken up the images in "packs" and so you are getting all of them at a discount at the $34.95 price I note that I will probably buy them as they are different, useful for some of my planned projects and I have DM's Guild money sitting there doing not much of anything.

The DMs Guild. A nice place to visit if you have the time to trawl through a morass of "stuff" that will never make anyone rich.

-- George Krashos

A couple things to respond to on this

A) I totally agree with you on sales. My pay what you want 156 page "Complete Red book of Spell Strategy" has had thousands of downloads for free, but only maybe a little over $100 in 3 years of sales time. That being said, its helped pay for me buying articles from others (for instance, I just noted I made another $5.25 in the past 2 months, with 4 paid for copies and 47 free copies during that time).

B) George put a plug when you reference that, because we all like your stuff (I especially like the one referencing the rider on the horse who worshipped Hoar). I have it, and I will say it was well worth the $1.

C) just have to also say, I totally agree on the "slogging through a morass of stuff". There is way too much up there. This is why I also feel it is great if anyone here finds something they really like to reference it and save us all time.

D) Referencing C AND the fact that I have $5 free... I'm intrigued by something I do see up there. It might be a little pricey, but I'm a magic rules junkie.... and I'd like to see sorcerers given options... and metamagic is like candy... so I'm buying this. The preview looked interesting, hopefully its good.

Oh, and I'm now halfway through the expanded metamagic thing above. I will say, whoever wrote it loved the realms, as each metamagic option is given a "believed origin" that references areas of the realms and people from the past. For the mere "tickled my heart strings" reason, I'm glad to have purchased it. Locational Spell is SOOO me long ago. I loved the "can't find me, can't kill me" option of magical combat.

I stick to my philosophy on buying on DMsGuild very carefully and am changing mine on selling at the moment. I always buy whatever is up as PWYW. I scan through it and see if there is significant effort put into it or if itís of true quality and then I go back and pay some real money for it. Itís not always about quality. Some dad put up a collection of his daughters (I think she was 6 or something) art with some statistics and that touched me, so I dropped quite a bit on it lol.

As far as selling goes, I have over a dozen items up there that I never really cared about making money on, I just wanted to revitalize the setting. I got thrills worth much more to me than 0.50 when someone wrote about how much the loved it in a review.

On the flip side, I just spent close to $300 on art for a new book on Anchorome that I have also put over 100 man-hours of work into. Iíd like to at least make my money back lol.

All "Maztica Alive" products can be found below, linked to the campaign guide.

There's been stuff I've paid for on the DM's Guild that proved to be utter crap. One thing, in particular, was unimaginative and filled with enough typos and bad grammar that I'm not sure the person was even aware that spellcheck existed.

And there's been free stuff that's been really, really good, too.

If something is pay what you want, I generally do the suggested price.

I've paid $10 or more for Guild stuff a couple of times, but it's always been either purely WotC stuff, or a larger product from someone whose name I know to trust -- like the Moonshae Isles Regional Guide.

For stuff from authors I don't know, $2 or $3 is fine, or $5 if I have reason to expect it to be good. There's been too much stuff on there, though, that wasn't even worth $2, for me to be comfortable tossing too much towards some unknown person.

So for me, it comes down to how much am I getting, and from whom.

I've honestly not gotten a lot of stuff from there, though, since there's not a lot that is just lore. I keep seeing variations of classes, homebrew classes, and half a gazillion background listings. I'm far more interested in the non-crunchy stuff; I'm only into the crunchy stuff if it's something like NPC names or dungeon filler stuff like titles of books or lists of random objects, magical or mundane.

FWIW, I originally posted my 101 page product, Forgotten Characters of the Realms (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/207031/Forgotten-Characters-of-the-Realms), for $10 figuring just under $0.10 a page was a fair price when I compared it to what others were charging--usually a lot more per page for much smaller products (thanks again to everyone who purchased it btw, still accepting reviews and suggestions). I sold just over 200 or so before the price was cut in half after a year and now I'm up to 264 total (still silver, no idea what I need to sell to get to electrum, guessing 300).

FWIW, I originally posted my 101 page product, Forgotten Characters of the Realms (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/207031/Forgotten-Characters-of-the-Realms), for $10 figuring just under $0.10 a page was a fair price when I compared it to what others were charging--usually a lot more per page for much smaller products (thanks again to everyone who purchased it btw, still accepting reviews and suggestions). I sold just over 200 or so before the price was cut in half after a year and now I'm up to 264 total (still silver, no idea what I need to sell to get to electrum, guessing 300).

Iím getting the impression the whole Electrum/Copper/etc bestsellers are a function only of money earned, not downloads or even dollars per download.

All "Maztica Alive" products can be found below, linked to the campaign guide.

I think I was the person who recommended the artist look at creating those deity icons. Specifically, because I'm writing a deity specific book and there's no commercial-use deity symbols for any of the FR deities. There's an approved Eberron art pack with holy symbols, but nothing for FR. The artist made some incredible, awesome looking icons for the factions of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, so I posted on the FB group that he should look into FR deity icons since none exists.

That is a niche market (just like his other faction icons, which TBH I like that style more than these deity icons) but it's a niche market that is currently unfilled. His market is other DM's Guild authors, not players/DMs. Because players and DMs can just download official WotC FR icons and print them out or whatever. DM's Guild authors can't use any WotC material unless it's specifically allowed (which excludes a ton of necessary things, like basic holy symbols, maps, etc.).

The Electrum, Copper, etc. are based on sales specific to the DM's Guild website checkout. The 'actual sales' vs 'DM's Guild sales' get screwy, because someone can add an DM's Guild item to their cart, but then check out on DriveThruRPG or DriveThruCards, etc.(any of the OBS sites) and that won't count towards the Electrum, Copper, etc. counts - but it counts as for total sales just not for the DM's Guild metal medal/icon.

I recall about a year ago that someone here on Candlekeep posted a link to a Google+ archive of DOZENS of high-quality Realms deity symbols. Of course, those can no longer be accessed because (earlier this year) Google+ service has been discontinued by Google.

If I recallÖ. the original creator made those available for free. They were of very good quality too! Anyone know if the creator re-posted his Deity Symbols somewhere?

I recall about a year ago that someone here on Candlekeep posted a link to a Google+ archive of DOZENS of high-quality Realms deity symbols. Of course, those can no longer be accessed because (earlier this year) Google+ service has been discontinued by Google.

If I recallÖ. the original creator made those available for free. They were of very good quality too! Anyone know if the creator re-posted his Deity Symbols somewhere?

The bigger problem is that WotC/DM's Guild takes down any content that looks too similar. They revoked the Ravinca icons and Waterdeep: Dragon Icons and other symbols because they 'looked too similar' to the official icons - while at the same time they don't provide any official icons for commercial use within their own publisher/DM's Guild.

Meanwhile, there's hundreds (or more) of image copyright (and plagiarism) violations that have been reported and DM's Guild has taken zero actions on any of those. The only time something gets deleted is if it looks like WotC IP - not if it's someone else's property. For example, I reported a product using an image of a video game character watermarked with "IGN.com" across the cover. That product has been on DM's Guild since 2017 and it's still there. I've reported "Electrum" ($10) products that are direct copy-pastes from well known FR authors taken from Dragon magazine articles, and those products are still there.

quote:Originally posted by jamesewelchI've reported "Electrum" ($10) products that are direct copy-pastes from well known FR authors taken from Dragon magazine articles, and those products are still there.

The artist has now uploaded each individual deity symbol for 1-2$ (USD). All for commercial-use for creators.

Now that was a good idea. Especially because you can see the pictures better.

Yoink, Leira, Deneir, Savras, Mystra, and Helm.

Oh, and did not realize... there's different versions of most (i.e. Deneir has just the candle, or a version of the candle on black with a gold border). That's a nice and easy addition for the artist to have done with a computer, and appreciated.

So, just to see.... am I just a cheap bastard (hey, I'll own it)Ö or how much would you be willing to pay

As someone that has always had an interest in creating works for gaming and making whatever profit off of my work I could, I think whatever someone charges for that work has always been hard to determine. You can compare similar works with works already available and form a decent price comparison and charge similar prices. If no other similar works are available, pricing becomes even harder.

How much each individual is willing to pay is directly tied to how much use each individual would get out of said work. Would I pay $35 for those symbols? I doubt it as I think that's too much. My pinch point to purchase would probably be somewhere around $10-15. Someone else's might be $1 or less.

There is no perfect formula for pricing on virtual items. I just bought two PDFs totaling $70+ from established developers for a game system I don't use because I think the content of those PDFs (monsters) will get used in my game eventually, regardless that they're for another system. That's worth paying for, and I would have paid even more for content like this, but that's me.

"Intimidation is a weapon of the Legion. Intelligence is not." -Illidan Stormrage

I think this is on topic I think, if not I apologize. Iím personally completing a 100 page campaign guide for Anchorome. It closely details the Pasocada Basin region bringing it up to the current year hopefully without contradicting any canonical material. It has dozens of new locations and expands well into new homebrew and/or canonical (like the Land of the Insect Men) regions. I have spent close to $300 on art and select DMsGuild material for the project.

It can be used for a full campaign, as it has races, classes, subclasses, monsters, new forms of magic, new magic items, adventure locations and much more. I have well over 100 man-hours of work into it. If there was a decent sized preview and you liked what you saw, would you ever even consider a 12.99 price tag for this? All I really want to do is make the money I spent making it back so my wife doesnít suffocate me in my sleep.

All "Maztica Alive" products can be found below, linked to the campaign guide.

I think this is on topic I think, if not I apologize. Iím personally completing a 100 page campaign guide for Anchorome. It closely details the Pasocada Basin region bringing it up to the current year hopefully without contradicting any canonical material. It has dozens of new locations and expands well into new homebrew and/or canonical (like the Land of the Insect Men) regions. I have spent close to $300 on art and select DMsGuild material for the project.

It can be used for a full campaign, as it has races, classes, subclasses, monsters, new forms of magic, new magic items, adventure locations and much more. I have well over 100 man-hours of work into it. If there was a decent sized preview and you liked what you saw, would you ever even consider a 12.99 price tag for this? All I really want to do is make the money I spent making it back so my wife doesnít suffocate me in my sleep.

Given that there's little information currently on the area other than City of Gold, I don't see it as a major price tag. However, I'm interested in the region. The key is going to be telling people what's in it.

EDIT: And seeing Arcanamach's reply below (even though its about the original product, not yours) makes me want to come back and add more clarity to this post, because I think you're putting effort into this Seethyr.

I would recommend a full size preview that gives at least some of the following:A listing of the chaptersA description of any new races being introducedAn idea of any new magic systems being developedA map preview at a VERY high scale so that its enough to show that you are filling in more than city of gold did, but not enough to show off your whole project and what you're putting where.

For me, the problem with the guild is I can't see it before I buy it. Sure, you can put out a preview...but that isn't the same as going to a bookstore and combing through the product before purchase. I am very leery of purchasing anything...at almost any price...without a decent idea of it's worth. The exception would be for those contributors that I know have put out quality work in the past. I at least have previous work to establish a baseline with.

For this product, even if the artwork is great, the price is far too high, IMHO. You can get full adventures, rulebooks, etc. for $50 so $30 for a few pictures isn't going to cut it...not even with a commercial license. There should be a separate price for the commercial license. To me, the complete set shouldn't cost more than $5 w/o it.

I don't think I'm being cheap at that price either (5 is still too high, IMO). I'm just comparing what can be had (page-count, content, artwork and all) for an actual book published by a solid company for only a few dollars more than the asking price. The creator assumes risk in the publishing but you'll sell more at a lower price and make more money than you would at the higher price. You also have to look at branding. Put out good work at a lower price initially and, eventually, you'll be able to publish at a higher price. But again, you assume the risk. That's the nature of any business (success is never guaranteed).

I want to take this a step further. If Ed or any number of the other luminaries in the industry had published this I may very well be willing to shell out $30+ on it because I want to support them. Take, for instance, the fact that ELB recently gave us Under Illefar Anew for FREE!. If he now came around with a product like this for that price I'd drop the coin for it no question. In fact, if he were to post UIA at the guild I'd go pay for it even though I already have it...just to support a known author of quality work.

I'm just saying that, as far as I can tell, this author is unknown. I need more before I'll start giving him my hard-earned cash.

As someone who is currently paying (and has paid in the past) for commissioned artwork for commercial products, this is a good deal. These art packs are not targeted at players or DM's, so I don't understand all the hate coming from people. These artworks were needed by the creator community. The artworks were requested by the creator community. These artworks are for the creator community. The sole purpose is for commercial use, because WotC doesn't provide any allowable, official religious symbols that we can use (for FR, WotC provides some Eberron holy symbols that we're permitted to use in commercial products).

1-2$ for a custom artwork with a commercial license? That's well below industry standards. If you were to ask an artist to do a custom artwork like this, it would probably cost $10-20 (USD) for a single image.

FWIW, Forgotten Characters of the Realms just made it to best electrum status with 267 sold, so somewhere between 264 and 267 units gets you electrum.... And a mighty thank you to all of you who helped me get there. I really do appreciate it. It's fun doing this stuff for my self, but its really gratifying to knows others might value it too. Thanks again.